"Pumpkinflowers" has been chosen as one of five finalists for the 2017 Taylor Prize for Canadian non-fiction. The five are:
Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier's Story of a Forgotten War by Matti Friedman
Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World by Marc Raboy
This Is Not My Life: A...

Mother Jones includes "Pumpkinflowers" on its year-end list of 20 recommended books, describing it like this:
"This is a 21st-century war story, with all of the IEDs, propaganda videos, jihadi groups we're accustomed to—but one told in the restrained, introspective style of the World War I writers...

Booklist has chosen "Pumpkinflowers" for its 2016 Editors' Choice list. The editors write:
"Friedman’s compelling narrative of what he learned by serving in the late 1990s as an Israeli soldier assigned to a vulnerable hilltop fortress in Lebanon, called the Pumpkin, is freighted with explosive geopolitical...

Canada's National Post has chosen "Pumpkinflowers" as one of the top 99 books of 2016. The editors write:
"Friedman recounts a small group of soldiers’ defence of a single hill in Lebanon as a microcosm for regional conflict and many asymmetrical conflicts worldwide. Friedman, one of those young...